In this reflection, I’m drawing on a real mentoring session with a leader I recently worked with. I’ll keep the person and context anonymous, because what matters here is not who they are, but what we explored together: how easily “being calm and professional” can turn into emotional isolation, and why we use metaphors like the fortress and the cell in mentoring to make these invisible patterns visible—and changeable.
When Calm Becomes a Cell: The Hidden Cost of Professional Composure
There is a certain type of leader most tech cultures admire. Calm in a crisis, voice steady when production is burning, face neutral when a big client is unhappy. We look at that composure and call it strength; we tell ourselves that this is what good leadership looks like. In mentoring sessions, though, when people finally speak honestly, something else appears beneath that surface. Many of these “calm” leaders do not feel strong at all; they feel distant from themselves. What looks like a fortress from the outside often feels like a locked room from the inside.
In one of these sessions, the leader sitting in front of me described the pressure to be composed, not to “bother others” with their emotions, and to move through life and work with a stable exterior. It sounded reasonable and responsible. But as we unpacked it, a pattern became visible: the more they tried to be stable on the outside, the more they disconnected from what was actually happening inside. Their calm was not a grounded presence; it was over-regulation. The inner world was still moving, still reacting, still feeling – it had just been pushed out of awareness.
This is where the metaphor of fortress versus cell becomes useful. A fortress is built so that life inside can continue to function while the storm is raging outside. It creates space, perspective, and a sense of safety so that decisions can be made with a clear head. A cell, on the other hand, is built to isolate; it restricts movement and cuts you off from the world. From the street, both can look like stone walls and narrow openings. From the inside, the experience is entirely different. Many leaders believe they are building a fortress of composure when in reality, they are slowly sliding into the emotional isolation of a cell.
In my work with this leader, we spent time examining the inner architecture. On the surface, there is behaviour, the visible layer: the controlled voice in a meeting, the “all good” response when someone asks how you are, the ability to keep working after a setback. Below that sit convictions, the things you think you believe. In leadership, these often sound like: “Emotions are unprofessional”; “People depend on me being strong”; “If I show doubt, I lose authority.” Deeper than that are values, the things you actually care about when you are fully honest with yourself, such as truth, courage, connection, and integrity. At the very core sits fear, not as a defect to be removed, but as a gatekeeper that guards the most vulnerable parts of you.
If you never turn towards that core, fear quietly shapes everything from the shadows. You still make decisions, you still hold meetings, you still “perform”, but the underlying driver is avoidance: do not feel too much, do not ask too deeply, do not pause long enough to notice what is really going on. That is the moment where your inner structure stops being a fortress and slowly becomes a cell. You are still functioning, but you are not really in contact with yourself anymore. You are not responding to reality; you are defending yourself against your own experience.
What Stoicism is, and what it’s not
“You have power over your mind — not outside events.
Realize this, and you will find strength.”— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Stoicism is often misused to justify this pattern. People pick up a half-digested idea of “not being ruled by emotions” and turn it into “not feeling emotions at all”. That is not what Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus had in mind. Stoicism is not about deadening the inner life; it is about seeing it clearly, understanding what belongs to you and what does not, and choosing your response with intention. The fortress, in a Stoic sense, is not a concrete block you hide behind; it is an inner space in which everything can be present – fear, anger, grief, joy – without any of it dictating your next move.
In this mentoring work, I often use the image of sitting with the dragon. Everyone has their dragon; that thing they least want to feel or look at. For some, it is regret about earlier choices; for others, it is shame about not being “enough”; for others, it is fear of being abandoned or replaced. The typical reflex in leadership is to either fight it as quickly as possible, by fixing, explaining, rationalizing, or to walk away from it entirely, by changing the topic, changing the job, changing the city. The Stoic move is different: you stay in the room. You sit down with the dragon and let it be there without immediately trying to win or escape. You feel the heat, you hear the stories it tells, and then you ask yourself what is actually true and what is simply old fear repeating itself.
This is the point where the fortress becomes visible. It is that inner distance between stimulus and response that Viktor Frankl described, the space in which you notice “I am afraid”, “I am angry”, “I am ashamed”, and at the same time remember that you are not identical with that feeling. You can feel it fully and still decide what kind of leader you want to be in this moment. You do not need to pretend that you are fine; you also do not need to let the emotion steer the entire ship. You are allowed to remain present with yourself and with others at the same time.
What Stoicism Teaches About Real Leadership
“You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
The Tech Leader in This Situation
For tech leaders, this matters more than we often admit. When you are in a cell, your team experiences you as distant. You are technically available, but emotionally absent. People sense that something is off, yet they cannot name it; they just know that it is difficult to really connect with you or bring you bad news.
When you are in a fortress, your external behaviour may look similar – you are still calm, you still do not break down in every meeting – but the felt quality is different. Your presence has weight. People can feel that you are actually there, not hidden somewhere behind your own walls. They sense that you notice what is happening in the room, including inside yourself, and that you are willing to stay with it. They experience you as confident, strong, and calm – a person worth following.
The shift from cell to fortress does not come from reading another quote or finding the perfect framework. It comes from small, repeated acts of honesty with yourself. It is the moment you admit, at least privately, “I am scared of this restructuring” instead of immediately jumping into plans and slides. It is the moment you allow yourself to feel disappointment after a failed launch, instead of rushing straight into “lessons learned” mode. It is the evening when you sit with the uncomfortable sense that your role and your values may be diverging, instead of numbing it away with more content, more work, more noise.
In my mentoring work, the real turning point is rarely a breathtaking insight. It is usually a quiet sentence, spoken slowly, when someone finally stops performing and tells the truth about their inner state. That sentence opens the door from the cell into the first room of the fortress. From there, we can start to build: a regular rhythm of reflection instead of waiting for burnout, deliberate emotional check-ins instead of long stretches of numb productivity, slower conversations where people are allowed to say “I don’t know yet” without losing face.
Stoic leadership, in this sense, is not about becoming less human. It is about becoming more consciously human. You do not lose your emotions; you learn to live with them in a way that supports your role instead of sabotaging it. You do not drop your standards; you drop the illusion that you can only uphold them by locking yourself away emotionally. The fortress gives you the stability to stay open; the cell gives you the illusion of safety at the cost of connection.
In a world that rewards constant output and punishes visible vulnerability, building a fortress is more demanding than building a cell. One requires ongoing work with yourself, the other only requires shutting the door and keeping busy. But only one of them allows you to lead in the way people secretly hope you will: as someone steady without being cold, honest without being chaotic, and present without being consumed.
That is the work before us if we want to call ourselves Stoic leaders: not to feel less, but to feel fully and still be able to choose.
The Learning
If you recognise parts of yourself in this story, the point is not to diagnose yourself as “wrong” but to notice where you are building a cell instead of a fortress. Mentoring is, in many ways, the work of learning to see that difference earlier and to practice different choices on purpose. A few concrete takeaways you can work with:
Notice the moment of over-regulation.
Pay attention to situations where you “switch to professional mode” so hard that you stop feeling anything at all. That is usually not composure; it is the first brick of the cell. Ask yourself: what am I not allowing myself to feel right now?
Separate the belief from the behaviour.
When you catch thoughts like “If I show doubt, I lose authority” or “Emotions are unprofessional”, treat them as hypotheses, not facts. You can still act with calm and clarity while questioning whether these convictions are actually serving you and your team.
Build a small, regular reflection practice.
Instead of waiting for a crisis, create a weekly rhythm of honestly reviewing your week: where did I hide, where did I show up, what did I avoid feeling? A fortress is built in quiet repetition, not in dramatic breakthroughs.
Practice staying in the room a little longer.
When discomfort shows up – conflict, feedback, shame, fear – experiment with staying present for a few breaths longer than you usually would. You are training your capacity to “sit with the dragon” instead of running or attacking.
Test vulnerability in safe, limited ways.
You do not need to overshare to break the cell. Start with small admissions of uncertainty or emotion in trusted settings: “I don’t have the answer yet, but here is how I’m thinking about it.” This builds evidence that openness and authority can coexist.
These are the kinds of moves I work on with mentees: not abstract ideals, but specific, repeatable behaviours that slowly change the inner architecture from avoidance to presence. Over time, you do not become a different person; you become more aligned with who you already are when you stop hiding from yourself.
Stoic leadership, in this sense, is not about becoming less human. It is about becoming more consciously human. You do not lose your emotions; you learn to live with them in a way that supports your role instead of sabotaging it. You do not drop your standards; you drop the illusion that you can only uphold them by locking yourself away emotionally. The fortress gives you the stability to stay open; the cell gives you the illusion of safety at the cost of connection.
In a world that rewards constant output and punishes visible vulnerability, building a fortress is more demanding than building a cell. One requires ongoing work with yourself, the other only requires shutting the door and keeping busy. But only one of them allows you to lead in the way people secretly hope you will: as someone steady without being cold, honest without being chaotic, and present without being consumed.
That is the work before us if we want to call ourselves Stoic leaders: not to feel less, but to feel fully and still choose.
— Adrian
Founder & CTO · Stoic discipulus